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www.rotarydownunder.org 29
W
e are tantalisingly close
to ending polio. Of the
disease’s three strains, we
haven’t seen a case of type
2 since 1999 or of type 3
since 2012. All the polio
cases in the world now stem from only three countries:
Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. If we can end polio
in these three nations, we will shut the door on the
disease forever.
Technological advances have facilitated our progress:
We can target our vaccines to specific strains and use
mapping software to help ensure health workers
reach every single child. We’ve received funding
commitments from everyone from governments to
international institutions to nonprofits – and you.
One of the biggest remaining challenges is security;
violence in all three of the endemic countries threatens
to keep the vaccine away from children.
In late July, the leaders of Rotary’s polio eradication
efforts in these countries – Tunji Funsho, chair of the
Nigeria PolioPlus Committee; Aziz Memon, chair of
the Pakistan PolioPlus Committee; and Mohammad
Ishaq Niazmand, chair of the Afghanistan PolioPlus
Committee – came to Evanston to discuss their
progress, challenges and opportunities.
Nigeria
Of the three remaining endemic countries, Nigeria
is closest to stopping the transmission of polio. As
of August 6, it had only five recorded cases in 2014,
compared with 42 at the same time last year. And four
of those five cases were clustered in the northern state
of Kano. Routine immunisation coverage jumped from
36 per cent of children in January 2013 to 55 per cent
in December 2013.
“Routine immunisation is what will get us there,”
Funsho says.
Strengthening the health care infrastructure is key
to achieving broad acceptance of the polio vaccine in
Nigeria (and all the endemic countries), where other
childhood diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and
respiratory illnesses are at the forefront of people’s
minds. In May, Rotary began funding health camps,
where doctors and nurses supplied by the government
meet primary health care needs – and administer polio
vaccine. The camps have been a “game changer,”
Funsho says. “It’s a magnet to draw people out of
their homes to get the OPV [oral polio vaccine].”
While the country has never been closer to ending
polio, violence in northern Nigeria threatens to
impede progress. Boko Haram militants have killed
thousands of people, including polio vaccinators,
during their five-year insurgency, and are behind the
kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls that made
headlines earlier this year (as of press time, they still
had not been released). For several months in 2013,
health workers couldn’t vaccinate children in Borno
State at all. But recent military action by the Nigerian